Beauty

Come up with me, American love. Kiss these secret stones with me. The torrential silver of the Urubamba makes the pollen fly to its golden cup. The hollow of the bindweed’s maze, the petrified plant, the inflexible garland, soar above the silence of these mountain coffers.

As you are woman, so be lovely: As you are lovely, so be various, Merciful as constant, constant as various, So be mine, as I yours for ever.

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds.

All in green went my love riding on a great horse of gold into the silver dawn.

Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair— Lean on a garden urn— Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. 1

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

As the rain falls so does bathe every object of the world—

As a white candle In a holy place, So is the beauty Of an aged face.

That scrawny cry—It was A chorister whose c preceded the choir. It was part of the colossal sun.

Light the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest and, for small reason, think The world imagined is the ultimate good.

The inconceivable idea of the sun. You must become an ignorant man again And see the sun again with an ignorant eye And see it clearly in the idea of it.

She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.

Beauty is momentary in the mind— The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body’s beauty lives.

She says, “But in contentment I still feel The need of some imperishable bliss.” Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams And our desires.

She is as in a field a silken tent At midday when a sunny summer breeze Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent, So that in guys it gently sways at ease.

Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Down the mountain walls From where Pan’s cavern is Intolerable music falls. Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear, Belly, shoulder, bum, Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs Copulate in the foam.

I carry the sun in a golden cup, The moon in a silver bag. 8

Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.

Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness and maybe The heart-revealing intimacy That chooses right, and never find a friend.